April 1, 1945: United States Tenth Army invades Okinawa, Japan.
October 29, 2005: United States announces Half of U.S. Marines to leave Okinawa.
After sixty years of resistance, the Okinawan insurgents have thrown some of the American invaders out.
I fear we won’t have enough boots on the ground to weed out the remaining insurgency and to help spread democracy and capitalism to the Far East. Can the ramshackle Japanese government, originally appointed by the US and later selected in a number of sham elections and creation of a faux constitution, handle its own affairs without falling into a bloody religious civil war? Will the native warlords and the militant people live together peacably to build a nation together?
I also fear that it sends the wrong message to other insurgents around the world that if they resist and carp enough, they, too, can cause US political will to crack and to force 7,000 American soldiers to cut and run to Guam.
(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Sunday Drive.)
